Widespread homosexuality is both cause and effect of social and personal disintegration. More precisely, the gay agenda has already and will continue to wreak moral havoc. It does so by implementing a logic of permission that is untenable, but having been implemented becomes the habitual language of moral thought by which the great mass of men go about making moral decisions.Let me explain what I mean.

I began to talk about the “logic of permission” and then digressed a little when I started to think about where we get our permissions. I think for this series of thoughts to be useful, I need to be more concrete and to discuss the logic of permission that is followed in conventional morality and to explain why it is so harmful. This might take a post or two. Bear with me.

There are some basic defenses of homosexual behavior in particular that make it a lightning rod in this debate. These include the appeal to tolerance, the defense of love, and the notion that people are born homosexual.

In this post, I will address the issue of tolerance, but please note my intention. I am trying to show that the “logic of permission” used to defend homosexual behavior “wreaks havoc” on morality itself. What I mean is that, if we accept this logic for homosexuality, then we develop patterns and habits of thought that undercut our ability to make moral decisions. Even if we argue that homosexuality is a unique and special case, we still, being humans, develop these patterns and habits of thought.

We are reminded incessently that tolerance is a virtue and that we are showing intolerance if we “condemn” or “judge” gays. The reason this argument is so effective is because the words are so slippery – they border on meaninglessness. As an aside, for humans to rob language of meaning is truly one of the most evil things we can do. Language is a mark of the Divine Image and it separates us from the beasts. So we have to guard the meaning of words.

I changed my mind. That isn’t an aside. One of the bad habits the appeal to “tolerance” causes us to develop is the habit of mangling language and making it meaningless. Loss the language war and all is lost. Define what the terms mean and you are a long way toward winning any debate. Language must stay bound to nature, to reality, to things as they are. When language loses its power to mean, society is done. Put that in terms of degree and you’ll see what is happening already.

Tolerance is a meaningful word and a good thing. But it isn’t always a good thing. Everybody knows we shouldn’t tolerate everything, a confession expressed by the solipsistic bumper sticker “tolerate everything except intolerance!”. In other words, you have to decide on some things that you won’t tolerate. You have to make (hold on to your hat) judgments about what to tolerate and what not to tolerate.

But people who grow up hearing tolerance celebrated in the abstract, as though it is a universal virtue, as though we should tolerate everything, are morally crippled. For a society to make a law is to determine that some things will not be tolerated, say, speeding, rape, child abuse, tax evasion, causing global warming, etc. But judgment, discretion, decision making take practice and that practice must begin with obeying what authorities say about right and wrong (first parents, then others). A standard must be supplied and when that standard is violated, decisions must be made about what short falls will be tolerated and which will not.

Tolerance is a “relative virtue.” Sometimes we should exercise it and sometimes we should not. To appeal to tolerance as the reason for allowing something is begging the question. It is like saying, “we should allow this because we should allow it.” Tolerance is not an abstract virtue. It is concrete, related to specific circumstances, specific people, at specific times, and calling for specific responses.

Should we tolerate homosexuality? I don’t know. To answer the question, I would have to know what you mean. I don’t believe we should stone homosexuals. I don’t have any trouble being friends with homosexuals (as long as they can tolerate me).

Should we judge homosexuality? That depends on what you mean too. I believe that homosexual behavior is wrong and unhealthy. Does that mean I am judging homosexuality? Sort of. But it is not I who am making this judgment. I feel utterly unqualified to develop my own moral law. I believe what I believe because the authorities I believe teach it, namely, the Christian tradition and human nature. So to be precise, I am not judging it, I am submitting to the judgment of those who know and I am allowing my behavior and attitudes to be regulated by those who know.

This is an important point. So called “anti-homosexuals” or “homophobes” are accused of “judging” homosexuals. In fact, many of them are guilty of this charge. They establish themselves as the makers of the moral law and then they attack homosexuality on no greater charge than that they don’t like it. It grosses them out or bothers them or scares them. This is wrong, because we do not have the right to compel others to live according to our tastes just because they are our tastes.

In short, if H-S is wrong, it isn’t wrong because I don’t like it.

But that is precisely what the H-S lobby has been able to respond to. America lost its moral footings a long time ago. We commit every crime under the sun and we practice serial polygamy. Heterosexuals have made marriage a meaningless concept. H-S’s look at that and say, “who are you to judge me.” It’s the right question. The only right answer is something like, “Nobody. I don’t judge you. But the moral law and the law of God does have something to say to both of us. I break it here and here and here. I seek healing. Can you see that you also need healing?”

Our Lord told us not to judge. So did the apostle, St. James. James said that when we do, we judge the law ourselves. What did they mean?

H-S would have us believe they meant that we should not recognize some behavior as wrong or even some people as evil. It’s hard to imagine how Jesus and St. James could be regarded as not believing some people are evil. Jesus called people things like white washed sepulchres and hypocrites. So clearly they aren’t arguing that we shouldn’t judge because, after all, nothing is wrong.

Jesus followed his instruction not to judge with the admonition not to “Case your pearls before swine”! Yikes. That sounds judgmental!

Or maybe we miss His point. What both James and our Lord are telling us is that we cannot set up ourselves as the judge – we cannot set ourselves above the law itself and sit in judgment on the law. We are not fit to do so. We must submit to the judgments contained in the law.

Looked at from this perspective, something rather ironic becomes evident. Two people are guilty of “judging.” One, those who determine that things are wrong because they don’t like them. Two, those who determine that things are right because they like them. In other words, the bigot who feels free to beat up H-S because they scare him is judging and the H-S who won’t submit to the law is also judging.

So we’ve crippled people’s ability to think morally by turning tolerance from a relative to an absolute value. And we’ve weakened ourselves by failing to understand what our Lord meant when He said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

The third way we’ve crippled people’s ability to think morally is by overthrowing the notion of a moral law rooted in human nature to which all of us are bound. More on that later.

Were Mercury and Dionysus good friends? I’m scanning my memory for stories that involved both of them because, looking at the age, it seems evident to me that Mercury is the god of this age and that Dionysus is riding his wagon. Are they friends or rivals?

Mercury was the messenger god. He was the god of rhetoric, the lord of the clever. He was the god of merchants (derived from his name through the medieval “ch”ing of the Latin c), and traders, and thieves. He was a merry god, impish in all his doings. The kind of trouble maker you couldn’t help loving. Obviously a marketer.

Dionysus was a late-coming god. He was the god of the vine, but he had a dark side to him. He didn’t do well with unbelievers. He was worshipped in revelry, in Baccanalia. His followers didn’t thrive much better than his despisers. Something about him touched on madness.

Mercury has ruled western society for a couple centuries now, having been the unmentioned God of the British empire and then of the Hamiltonian American vision. Mercury appeals to the universally superficial, where he can make lots and lots of money.

Dionysus stepped forward in 19th century Germany and hovered around our windows for the first half or so of the 20th century. Then we invited him in, tired of the waste land the dead souls that ruled the west had created. In he came, with all his genius.

Since then, madness has spread like a vine. He brought his gifts with him and led us to abuse them, especially unrestrained use of alcohol and sex. He drove our judgment to the brutish beasts and is making a laughing stock of us even as I write. He has weakened us, unnerved us, unstrung the sinews of our soul. He has cut out our chests and laughed at our honors. And we have laughed with him.

The bill is coming due, but we won’t stop the orgy. His plan is destruction and we delight in every step of the torture.

More than anything, the sexual revolution is a part of our life that we can neither escape nor survive. What was once unspeakable has been so passionately embraced that teenagers listening to an adult champion it literally screamed their approval (on one account) and offered a standing ovation to the story teller who had the courage to out the character who embodied the spiritual center of her story. These kids knew, their souls were formed to intuit, that something eventful had just happened.

Dionysus’s vines had just pulled down another wall.

But if we draw back, what is really happening? The most obvious thing is that homosexuality is an inescapable part of the lives of virtually every one of us. Some would argue that it always was, but for now I’ll set that point aside. It’s important and also loaded with implications, but not what I’m writing about right now.

I, like virtually everyone, have and have had friends, work associates, and relatives who are openly homosexual. I feel affection for all of them and deep affection for some of them. I also have at least one friend who used to be homosexual and was delivered from what he or she (no clues) now profoundly regrets. In what I am writing, I do not “judge” my homosexual friends and acquaintances in the sense that I think of them as innately or unusally evil people. Some of them are decent enough, some of them are jerks. They’re just like the rest of us in that way. I’ll have more on this core issue of judging below.

But I’m not going to argue that therefore being homosexual is a matter of indifference. It is not. Everybody knows it is not. That’s why the kids screamed at the outing of Dumbledore.

In what follows, I am reflecting primarily on the social implications of homosexuality, but society is made up of individuals in the pursuit of a shared life that can help each of them find security and meaning, which combine to make what most of us call happiness. This is not an attack on individuals who are homosexual, though if you are I hope you’ll hear in this an appeal to find healing. It’s not written in anger or judgment. My goodness, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. I’ve never met a person more sinful than I am. Never.

So here’s my thesis: widespread homosexuality is both cause and effect of social and personal disintegration. More precisely, the gay agenda has already and will continue to wreak moral havoc. It does so by implementing a logic of permission that is untenable, but having been implemented becomes the habitual language of moral thought by which the great mass of men go about making moral decisions.

Let me explain what I mean.

The gay agenda is part of the wider sexual revolution, which is part of the wider moral revolution that has always been an undercurrent of civilization but which became “revolutionary” in the 18th century. It’s principles were not admitted explicitly until, probably Nietzsche, though De Sade was a bit brazen about some of them. The basic premise would have to be that I am the source of my own morality.

How do we go about determining what is permissible behavior? In Christian ethics, we recognize that none of us are smart enough or pure enough to figure out the philosophy of ethics before we destroy ourselves and none of us have the right to impose our values on the Christian community by expressing them just because we have them. In short, we recognize the common sense need to be taught right and wrong. Correllary to the need to be taught is the need to learn so that we can then teach.

In short, we believe in two principles that contemporary thinkers live by to an extent but cannot accept intellectually, so they spend their entire adult lives in confusion, hoisted on their own petard: authority and submission.

But the Christian tradition has always argued that authority must be rooted in actual knowledge, not personal preference. In the end, the only pure and reliable source of that actual knowledge is God Himself. He alone has a long and complete enough view to see all the implications of human behavior. He alone has enough self-control and disinterestedness to see things accurately. Therefore, He alone can provide us with sound counsel on how to live our lives.

Of course, the modern and post-modern mind scoffs at the whole notion of a god who has revealed what is good for us. For the sake of argument, let us grant that such a god cannot exist or if it does it cannot be known. I will only point out here that if that is the case, we cannot possibly solve the moral question, because nobody has any idea what he is talking about. Nobody has a long enough view or a pure enough heart.

Two possible exceptions arise: one, tradition, and two, individuals who attain a level of moral purity that gives them something like a Platonic vision of the moral law in all its glory. Someone, for example, like Jesus.

Then we have three options: God revealing the moral law to us, tradition, and a pure individual.

Combine those three and you have the Judeo-Christian tradition. I find that rather compelling.

I’m going to stop now because this is turning into a long blog and nobody likes to read long blogs, but I’ll be posting more on this in following blogs, particularly on my “accusation” that the gay agenda wreaks moral havoc. I truly consider this issue to be the issue with which civilization must deal in the coming decades or even what is left of civilization will be lost. Islamofascism finds its life source in our moral breakdown. Those are our Scylla (the monster of Islam0fascism) and Charybdis (the moral maelstrom).

The discussion around the Dumbledore case is profoundly revealing. I posted the following to one participant in the NY Times discussion. America’s heart is laid bear in these comments. So here’s my response to one of them:

I read all the comments up to 155 and then I thought: Without doubt this is the most interesting post. So I had to respond.

Alevard, you said:
“Isn’t the one thing that our faith and leaders preach is the acceptance and loving of others? Isn’t God’s love universal? Or does God select whom to love?”

To which I would say yes, great point! In fact, not only is God’s love universal, according to the Christian Bible, “God is love.” Clearly, this is the foundation of a sound discussion.

Then you say:

“Clearly a few of you don’t support homosexuality, and you know what!? that is your right! But, just because in your eyes its wrong doesn’t make it wrong! Love is what it is. An unexplainable force that blankets us all.”

This paragraph amazes me. First, you generously remind us that we all have rights. In fact, people opposed to homosexuality have the right not to support homosexuality.

Then you remind us that nobody has the power to determine what is wrong. Even if I think something is wrong, I might be wrong. This is an essential point that we all need to remember. None of us has the power to base what is wrong on our personal tastes.

Then you hit a home run: “love is what it is.”

No matter what anybody has to say about it, it still exists as what it is. Give it another name, it is still love. Give other things the same name, love is still love.

And what is love? You even tell us that: “an unexplainable force that blankets us all.”

That’s actually a critical question, a little like asking whether we are victims of love or lovers.

It reminds me of Paul McCartney’s interview when he was asked how he felt about all the accusations that the Beatles were corrupting youth. He said something like, “We were singing about love. That can’t be bad, can it?”

Well, Paul, yes it can. Mislead us on love and we’re in serious trouble. If love is what I have for a hot babe at the bar (a somewhat unexplainable force) or if it is the same thing that will enable me to keep my vows to my wife “when I’m 64,” I’d call that a pretty practical real world difference.

The Christian conception of love is not that of a very strong feeling over which I have no control, that I cannot rely on because it will go away or redirect itself when something better comes along, and that makes me emotionally dependent on addictive behaviors.

The Christian conception of love is that at some point I choose to love even when the immediate attraction fades, that I resolve to continue loving “for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” (i.e. no matter what), and that I will restrict the sexual expression of that love to the person with whom I am covenentally bound “till death do us part.”

Unexplainable? Yes. But we can still distinguish it from what it is not. It’s not about me. It’s about willing and acting for the well-being of the other.

Then you say:

“One more thing, for you parents that hide behind the shroud of “family values” there is nothing in this revelation of Dumbledore that should cause you to fret.”

Interesting phrasing. Why are we “hiding behind a shroud?” What are we hiding from? Your last sentence is only true if you are right, but you haven’t established that yet. Maybe you will below.

“If you take responsibility for being parents and guide your children to understand what is right or wrong (not that homosexuality is wrong) then your kids will grow up to be good people and active contributors to society despite sexual taste!”

But that begs the question. You have determined to tell us what is not wrong, while not allowing us to say what is wrong. That makes it hard for us to know what to teach our children.

One has to ask, and I don’t mean any rudeness, “who empowered you to tell us that homosexuality isn’t wrong?”

If it is wrong, and multitudes of sound ethical thinkers have found reasons to suggest that it is, then it does affect the person’s character. It doesn’t make them pure evil any more than my character weaknesses make me pure evil (I hope).

But, if it is wrong, than practicing homosexuals are doing something wrong when they practice. That would imply some sort of character weakenss.

You continue:
“Isn’t that the bigger picture, raising the new generation to be socially accepting, tolerant and respecting of ALL people.”

Now you are playing unfair. Not only are you insisting that we can ‘t say what is wrong but you can, now you are establishing a whole new moral code by borrowing one element of “traditional values” and making it the new law. Now people shouldn’t be loving, they should be “socially accepting, tolerant and respecting of ALL people.”

I don’t know if you mean anything when you say that, but I think you probably intend to. So I’m trying to figure it out. Do you mean that we should accept, tolerate, and respect everything that everybody does? Or just that we should a, t, and r all people.

The latter is easy when you think of them as the image of God. I’m not sure why a person should feel that way about a blob of protoplasm headed toward the grave.

But I cannot believe you expect us or yourself to accept, tolerate, and respect all behavior. Some behavior is wrong. You said so above. Some is harmful to my loved ones. I won’t tolerate that.

So now we’re full circle. What behavior are we to tolerate? You want us to tolerate what many have regarded as deviant sexual behavior. Why? Because we don’t have the right to say it is wrong.

But by your reasoning, nobody ever has the right to say any behavior is wrong. There is no right and wrong, really, only group’s opinions.

So why are we supposed to follow your opinion? Ours is rooted in thousands of years of human traditions and in what we believe is evidently healthier for the human soul and for human society.

What is yours rooted in?

Then you give us some very wise counsel:

“step up to the plate of parenting! As long as you raise GOOD, CARING an COMPASSIONATE people that should be enough!”

Indeed. But what do the words mean?

“Please people you are always entitled to have your own opinions and views! But make it your OWN! Not something that you were taught or told or preached! Learn the good and the bad with your own wonderful mind and realize that we all live in the same world and strive for the same happiness.”

This is weird and I love you for this paragraph. Thank you for teaching us, telling us what we should do, and preaching your message to us! You have the seeds of a lot of wisdom. I’m serious.

Now think harder and make your thoughts consistent; apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to us, and you will grow to become a very loving husband and a wise father.

Don’t believe what you do just because everybody around you honors you for it. Explore your own human nature and learn its lessons. It flourishes when fed truth, goodness, and beauty. It starves when it feeds on illusions.